Once More, With Feeling
by BeckySharp
Summary: The end of the Severus SnapeViviane Chance story arc. After leading separate lives for over ten years, they meet in Prague and come to some conclusions.
1. Default Chapter

**Once More, With Feeling**

_Paris April 1, 1922_

_a mile of clean sand  
I will write my name here, and the trouble that is in my heart.  
I will write the date and place of my birth,  
What I was to be,  
And who I am.  
I will write my forty sins, my thousand follies,  
My four unspeakable acts.....  
I will write the names of the cities I have fled from,  
The names of the men and women I have wronged.  
I will write the holy name of her I serve,  
And how I serve her ill.  
And I will sit on the beach and let the tide come in.  
I will watch with peace the great calm tongue of the tide  
Licking from the sand the unclean story of my heart._

_Edna St. Vincent Millay _

_This is the final entry in the Viviane Chance stories. I didn't think I was going to write another one...but I did. Severus Snape is the property of J.K. Rowling, Viviane Chance is a character I thought up. _

**Chapter One **

As soon as I saw who had been knocking on my door, I knew he had come about her. Now that all the others involved in the complicated mess of our youth were dead, the two of us had been able to forge a sort of accord over our losses and our task of rebuilding after Harry Sainted Potter fulfilled his destiny and saved the world, or whatever rot they were flogging these days.

It was an accord gathered carefully over years; mutual interest in Potions research and herbs, similar tastes in reading and long arguments on dueling strategies had built up if not friendship, a pleasant mutual forbearance. An epistolary one; face to face, you could not find a less congenial pair. Lupin in person meant trouble, and trouble always meant her. Oh all right, I'll say it, although I seldom allow myself to even think her name. Viviane Chance. Devereaux. Calloway. A travesty, that last one. Calloway, for Merlin's sake. I was never able to think of her as the wife of an oafish Irishman. To me, she was the highwire partner of Remus Lupin, the two of them perpetually catching each other from falling into any number of abysses. Viviane and Remus, paired forever in my memories, and now the male half of that particular equation slid past me and made himself comfortable at my empty hearthside.

I remained at the door, holding it open in hopes that he'd change his mind and leave. He showed no sign of doing so, as he sat with his long legs negligently crossed, looking at me with no discernable expression in his eyes. Maddening. Lupin was one of those men whose looks improved with age; what was once bony, underfed and prematurely gray had softened into elegant, spare movements and an aura of burnished world weariness. I suspected that the death of Sirius, instead of breaking him, set him free of a millstone he would never admit bearing.

"How have you been, Severus? Potions classes as painful as usual?"

"What are you doing here, Lupin? Surely, the Ministry of the Dark Arts wants nothing to do with me, and I am in no mood for a tete-a-tete. I'm busy."

He dropped his silly façade and frowned down at his interlaced fingers. "It has been a year, Severus," was all he said.

For the thousandth time, I wondered if the consequences of being bitten by a werewolf included a massive injection of cheek, spite and gall, or if Lupin had been born with them. I suspect the latter, but one never knows; he may have been a pleasant human, before becoming a Dark creature.

"That is not my concern," I replied, fury beginning to triumph over exasperation as it occurred to me to wonder why he thought it mattered. It had been ten years for me. "Why you wasted your time with this when you know quite well-"

"You didn't even bother to attend his funeral." He primmed up his lips, the hypocrite, in a manner that could not be outdone, even by Minerva. The memory of her loss only stoked my anger at Lupin – and her. She should have been here, fighting by Minerva's side. She had known that there were still battles to be fought when she ran away with Rufus Calloway, even if Potter had managed to finally smite Riddle. I made an heroic effort to dispel the vision of valiant Minerva falling under a barrage of curses, lest I start throwing things at Lupin's head.

"She, may I remind you, left me to resurrect this place alone, and ran off to Ireland with that talentless bounder. I owe her nothing, not then, and certainly not now."

The wretched man pretended to be lost in thought, then looked me in the eyes with a sickening expression of false sentiment.

"Remember the time Viviane-"

I cut off his stupid attempt to appeal to whatever feelings he thought I harbored for that traitorous Gallic nonentity. "No, I do not."

He at least had enough wit to subside back into the present. "She tried to salvage your friendship, Severus. I know she wrote you letter after letter, and yet you-"

"I had no interest in reading about my ex-lover's marital bliss."

"She missed you, grieved for you. When you wouldn't speak to her at Minerva's funeral two years ago, even Rufus was at his wit's end at how to relieve her sorrow. She could grieve through Minerva's death, but not through your renunciation of her. You understand her better, perhaps, than anyone ever has, and so she-"

A brief memory of Ishaqi flashed through my brain – the brain she had invaded without permission, all those years ago. I understood her all too well.

"And that is exactly why I have kept my distance, and will continue to do so. If you came here to engineer a soppy reunion, complete with embraces and tears of joy, you have wasted your time. I will never see her again, even if her husband did get himself killed trying to act like a man half his age."

Lupin got up with a resigned shrug that managed to insinuate I was a fool. I was reminded of why I only got on with him by letter.

"I have done my best," he commented as he headed for the door. As he opened it, he paused to drop the invisible bombshell he had been batting around in front of me like a kitten with a half-killed mouse.

"She left for Europe three months ago, still dazed with grief over Rufus' death. I thought the trip was a good idea, but I haven't heard a word from her since she left. It worries me. If she happens to send you a letter, do forward it to me instead of burning it unopened, like you have in the past. I want to stop imagining horrible scenes involving Malfoy and assorted torture devices."

My hand closed over his upper arm with strength that made him wince.

"Forget Malfoy." I stared into his eyes, and I saw he was in the grip of the same memory I was, of the night Lupin had arrived at my door, a battered and terrified Viviane in his arms. Neither of us needed to mention Balin. That night, Lupin had resigned her to me for the job of salvation, and I only was witness to the despair of which Viviane was capable. Somehow Lupin had guessed how deeply it went, damn him.

He extracted his arm from my grasp and turned to go. Without looking back, he said, "Have a pleasant trip. When you find her, be sure to write to me."

"Cheap Ministry bastard, go find her yourself," I screamed after him, then shut the door and sat down to write my request for leave to Headmistress Sprout.

I had never been to Europe. Too many crises, one after another, had intervened; the years that a wizard normally took his European tour, making contacts and friendships across wizard communities I spent saving Harry Potter from himself to ensure he fulfilled his destined heroics.

Now, I found great satisfaction in lingering over the wines of Spain, the bookstalls of Paris, the food of Germany. I sampled other things too, all of them interesting in their way. If nothing else, Viviane had greatly expanded both my expertise and my curiosity in intimate conquests. It was freeing, to wander incognito amongst strange cities and people, none of them whispering behind my back about my past misdeeds, or speculating about my future actions. To explore the Muggle side of places, I bought myself sets of soft woolen trousers and plain shirts, and to my surprise, found in myself a yen for jumpers, if they weren't too bulky. As a matter of fact, I liked the Muggle uniform very well; it looked good on me and was most convenient for traveling, and so I began wearing it even amongst my own kind. I put from my mind any tiresome meaning shedding my robes might have beyond the practical, because that sort of thing reminded me of Dumbledore, and it was bad enough that I had to think of Viviane so often. I tried to remember that I was only a man enjoying a European tour and, oh yes, looking for a woman he did not want to find.

Before I left, I had activated my few contacts amongst the European wizard community, but somehow I knew she would be traveling as a Muggle, although passing for one would never quite work, not for her. She was rather uncanny, even to wizards; I smiled as I imagined the reaction of a poor Muggle hotel clerk to this tall woman radiating such power and anger that they were almost visible to the naked eye.

Or perhaps only I saw her so clearly. Perhaps others saw a moderately attractive woman with extravagant taste, and no more.

I doubted it.

She lived a bit too vividly in people's imaginations for that. I was able to trace her easily, from Dover to Barcelona to Paris to Nice, Venice and now, Prague.

I had done it. I finally ran her to earth in Prague, that splendidly sinister city crawling across the floodplains and up the hills from either side of the Vltava. After two months of traveling and searching (and sending lengthy, trivial letters about my travels to Lupin, all ending with "and I'm still looking"), I had her. She had most amusingly chosen a hotel at the end of a cobbled street that, as I found out from the brochure I read while waiting to talk to the concierge, had been a 13th century convent. Perhaps she was more impressed by the nobleman whose house it became once the nuns were dispersed? Slaughtered? I wondered what had happened to them; the brochure was not forthcoming. As the concierge finished his business with the couple in front of me, I paced the large, square flagstones of the lobby and indulged in erotic thoughts involving the nobleman and a harem of women clad only in wimples.

Finally, he waved off the couple and beckoned to me. He looked like something out of a hackneyed Alpine guidebook, short and stout with a shock of white hair and shrewd eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. I had just begun to describe Viviane when he nodded. "Why yes, honored sir, the lady you describe is our guest, She is not in the hotel at this moment, but feeding the swans on the quay." His old eyes twinkled with memories of lust as he pointed out the way to go. "She's a splendid woman, and there is a flower vendor-"

I walked off without waiting for him to finish. I was not about to bring her anything.

On my way to the river, I encountered no one. It was so early that the mist was still lifting from the towers of Prague Castle, quite the most outrageous building I had ever seen, one that made Durmstrang seem quaint and harmless. I had spent the night before sitting on my balcony, entranced by the clouds of bats wheeling around its steeples in the moonlight. In the morning, the hills surrounding the castle glowed with the colors of early autumn, and it even smelled like autumn, despite my being in a city; wood smoke and dying leaves mingled with exhaust and stale paprika.

Pausing at one of the crumbling staircases that led down to the quay, I spotted her at once.

She was still tall, still held her back as straight as a furious dragon, and was still surrounded by damnably dangerous birds. Swans may seem romantic from a distance, but in reality they are huge, hungry and aggressive. She stood in the midst of at least ten of the creatures, tossing breadcrumbs into their gaping beaks. I could not see her face, but she was dressed in a long gray skirt and green jumper, which no doubt had the effect of deepening the color of her nondescript eyes.

She didn't seem inclined to look up, and a swift stab of disappointment was followed by relief, because I wanted to make my perilous way down the staircase without her scrutiny. A lucky thought – I had to cling to the railing as concrete crumbled underneath my feet.

As I managed to safely land myself on the quay, she looked up and saw me. "Severus?" she said, her voice harsh with surprise.


	2. Ch 2

**Chapter Two**

I saw her face, for the first time in a decade, and was struck incoherent. Her face. The lines at the corners of her eyes were a little deeper, her jawline a little softer, but otherwise the years had largely ignored her. It was her expression that confounded me; she had that indescribable look of someone who had experienced great love and great grief and an emotional life rich beyond my ken. For the first time since I had known her, she was beautiful.

Finally, I managed to take a step towards her, but my mind was so full I didn't think I could speak. It was with great surprise, then, that I heard my voice. "You've been happy," I accused her. "You loved him, loved him with your whole heart, you rotten bitch." I stopped. Had I just said that? If I did, at least I knew I meant it.

I had. She threw the remainder of the bread down the quay, and the swans hurried off after it, making their barbarous noises. She faced me, not furious, as I had expected, but closed off to me in a way I had never known from her.

"Yes Severus, you fool, of course I loved him."

Her eyes, which were indeed rendered brilliant by the combination of autumn light and green jumper held mine, although I was very conscious of the curve of her breasts made visible by her scooped neckline.

"Excuse the mistake, Viviane, but I never thought you were capable of acquiring such a taste for boredom-"

She began to walk away. I stood for a moment, marveling at her self control, but then it seemed wrong for her and I hastened to catch up. Besides, if anyone was going to do the walking away after all the trouble I'd taken to find her, it was going to be me.

"Viviane, please wait-" It was very odd, speaking her name aloud.

She turned on me. "I've waited ten years for you to grow up and realize just what was going on during those last months at Hogwarts. In vain, it appears. Go home, and tell Remus I'm just fine and I didn't feel like writing to him, that's all."

At that, I wanted to walk away, and nearly did. Seeing her though, and seeing the changes in her, made me too curious to leave. No tantrum, no reckless response to my taunts, no lashing out with the emotional ammunition we both knew she possessed to use on me. Her newfound reticence was interesting. Where had she aquired it? She had taken a few steps away when I reached out to detain her.

"Wait," I muttered, "Wait – "

With an impatient sigh, she turned, and the absence of anything but weariness and sorrow on her face told me how shattered she had been, and was. Remembering with a rueful frown my words to Remus about sentimental reconciliations, I slid my arms around her, and whispered a brief apology into her ear. The hair above it was streaked with gray, and I held her closer, waiting for the inevitable tears.

Being Viviane, she shed none. Not that she couldn't weep – she was capable of awesome floods of tears, especially if she lacked a handkerchief – but on any occasion where they might be appropriate...no.

She held herself aloof from me, refusing to give in to my embrace, and gods, it hurt. Our physical separation, which I had cursed through more long nights than I cared to remember, was nothing to this rejection of my hard-won apology.

But then she surprised me. She wriggled from my arms, glanced from me to the spires of the castle, and grinned. "I'll meet you for dinner tonight at Metamorphis, in Mala Stupartska. Eight o'clock?"

I knew exactly what she was thinking. "It is not my ancestral home," I snapped, and began to wonder if I could possibly survive this constant whiplash of emotion. But I agreed to dinner.

_Lupin,_

_Prague is a most fascinating city, very dark and mysterious. You would fit right in._

_Severus_

_P.S. I found her. There is no Malfoy nor torture implements, and she is busy feeding swans and suborning the ancient concierge of her hotel (a former convent, if you would believe it). She seems to have lost her touch, or at least her taste in men._

I had chosen a hotel in the oldest part of the city and before starting my search for Viviane, spent many hours marveling at the dizzying combination of rococo and religious fervor in the architecture. Nothing quite prepared me for the restaurant she'd chosen, though; it was deep in the vaults of a building that had to be from around the same era as her convent. Candles picked out flecks of mica in the stone walls and arches, and gleamed off of white tablecloths and dark red chairs. I found her already seated at a corner table, a waiter just beginning to pour a glass of wine. I hesitated. How to greet her? A handshake? A kiss? A quick Cruciatus? I settled for sliding into the chair opposite, and indicating that I also wanted wine. That took care of the first few moments, but after he left we sat there, staring at each other across a small table in a 13th century dungeon, sipping surprisingly good Moravian wine and having not the least idea what to say. After a quick review of our quarter-century relationship thus far, I decided that expecting anything else would have been far too optimistic.

Viviane raised her glass as if for a toast, but her brows slanted towards her nose in the familiar, puzzled gesture that rendered me speechless with unmentionable memories (probably good, considering how my last not-speechless moment turned out). She ended by waving her glass at me and taking a gulp of the wine.

Then she set her glass down.

"So, where is it? The Talisman? Show me, because I know you have it on you."

Stunning. How did she know I had it – or the remains of it – with me, and did she know that it was not exactly in the best of shape?

I picked up the menu and began to deliberately read each item. In my current state, I was capable of ordering something dreadfully Czech, and I don't fancy intestine. As I read, I waited to have the menu snatched from my hands, or for Viviane's eyes to peer over the top to insist that I produce the contraband. Nothing.

The waiter arrived, and I ordered something that was not intestine - salmon with champagne sauce, I think. I do know Viviane ordered the leg of boar - so typical - and at some point soon after prosciutto-wrapped melon and pate with cranberries and pear arrived. I reached for the melon, but my fingers were knocked away by a swipe of her hand.

"Talisman," she said.

I was very hungry, so there was nothing to do but comply. I spread a napkin out on the table, reached into my pocket and pulled out the green velvet bag. Looking steadily at her and, to soothe my nerves, recalling every terrible thing she'd ever done, I upended the bag over the napkin, and the fragments of the Talisman spilled out in a small golden stream.

That worked. She turned pale and dropped the fork she'd picked up and been playing with.

"You tried to use it without my cooperation, you damned bloody fool," she whispered, reaching out a finger to stir the golden anthill. "I thought I felt...I knew...you were up to no good, ten years ago."

I poured us both more wine, and cut myself a slice of the pate. This was going to be a long story, and a longer night.

"That's a fine accusation, coming from you, Mrs. Calloway. You left me with battles to fight and a shattered school to rebuild. How I went about it was my business."

She sighed, and shook the golden dust off of her finger. "I've tried to explain to you, over the years, but from lack of reply, I assumed you never read my letters." Reaching across the table, she took my hand, and I jumped at the contact. The collision between past, present, and memory was most disconcerting. "Severus, I had to leave. My obligation to the Order and to Dumbledore was over, and if I stayed, I would have been far too tempted to seize power on my own terms. I could have. I could have stayed, and made Hogwarts over into the version of Aquitaine that lives in my memory. I could have preserved my sword, accepted the power my father placed in me to exact obedience from the Dementors, and used them as my personal army against the Death Eaters - or anyone in my path." She shuddered. "I still cannot forgive him for that."

Sliding my hand from under hers, I nodded. "Clever of you, Viviane, to defend yourself with the one action of yours I supported. In that Ministry meeting, if Remus hadn't blasted Diggory into the wall, I would have." I took a piece of the melon and with an effort banished the memory of Viviane standing before an enraged Wizengamot, defying their order to use the Dementors against Ministry enemies, Diggory's wand pointed at her throat. She had lifted her chin and, with a twist of her head, offered him her neck, just as she would to a lover. I had to blink several times to rid myself of the image. "Are you trying to convince me that your desertion of Hogwarts was an act of noble sacrifice instead of an opportunistic ploy in the form of Rufus Calloway?"

With my usual luck, the food arrived just at that moment, allowing her to consider her reply. She picked at her boar for some time before setting her fork down and pinning me to my chair with that look she could use just as neatly as she could her sword.

"I am not trying to convince you of anything. As a matter of fact, I am trying very hard not to reach across the table and strangle you. The day after Harry dispatched Voldemort, I was packing up to go when Rufus - when I - he - you remember the sequence of events, I am sure; a long memory is one of your talents." She dug savagely into her meat, and ate a piece before continuing. "I was best gone, for the sake of Hogwarts, and for our sakes, as well. Do you really think you and I would have been able to resist using the Talisman, with the restraining hand of Albus gone, and nobody powerful enough to hold us back? We had been spiraling towards mutual destruction for years, Severus, and if one of us had not stepped away, we would have destroyed everything that the Order and Harry Potter fought for. Don't you see that?"

Adding disingenuousness to my list of her new traits, I broke off a corner of the salmon and regarded it for a moment before making a show of eating, then picked up a spear of asparagus and nibbled it as I took apart her scenario. "You stepped back from our relationship months before you left, Viviane, barely vouchsafing me a kiss between battles. You needn't have left to accomplish that; it was done. I could see that Calloway was infatuated with you, and wondered when he would offer you an escape, but I never thought you would be coward enough to take it. If you were best gone from Hogwarts, why were we still fighting for our very survival? Why did Minerva die fighting Death Eaters, if your work for the Order was done? As for the Talisman-"

How to explain? How to explain to this woman I now barely knew, the tangled mess that was myself, Sirius, James Potter, and his son? "Harry is only a child," the other Professors all said those first years, "why be so harsh with him?" Does ingratitude, arrogance, contempt and lies count? I saved his life, I trained him at great cost to myself and others, and in the end, he used what I taught him and triumphed, and in it I felt his father's triumph over me. I had thought to give the son one final lesson, one to show him that the wizarding world not only builds up its heros, it can discard them once they had done their job. I won't go into details here, but -

"I did try an experiment, to see what magic was left within it. Not enough, alas to accomplish my goal, and it was destroyed in the effort. And while we are on the subject of power, you flatter yourself, Viviane. I doubt any attempt to turn Hogwarts into your own personal fiefdom would have survived my and Minerva's objections. Remember, I know all too well your feelings towards Dementors, and that you never would have taken command of a Dementor army, no matter what it was you craved." I turned my attention back to my salmon, watching her from underneath my eyelashes.

She slumped back in her chair, staring down into her lap. "I miss Minerva so much," she whispered. "I often wonder if I could have done anything to save her."

Some things hadn't changed. She was still impossible to reason with.

"Perhaps you could have, had you been at Hogwarts when the remaining Death Eaters decided to start picking us off, one by one, as I noted earlier."

A heap of money was tossed on top of the remains of the Talisman, and Viviane grasped the arms of her chair. Before she could stand, a waiter hastened over to pull it back, and she stood up, draining her glass of wine. She held it for a moment, her fingers tightening on the stem, but she set it back down on the table.

"You never played chess much, did you, Severus? Remus used to take me apart in game after game. Sometimes, you need to sacrifice a great deal to make sure the game does not end in stalemate - not only pawns and rooks, but in extreme situations, you may need to sacrifice your entire strategy in order to escape limbo. It took me far too long to understand that, and it looks as though you'll never learn. I'm sorry to see it."

With that, she stalked out.

It had not been a long night, after all.

_Dear Lupin,_

_Gods, how have you put up with her all these years, or do you enjoy her newly found self-righteousness? She must have picked it up from you. Rufus may have been a few points north of an idiot, but at least he knew his limitations (except when it came to playing Quidditch with men half his age)._

_We had a dinner full of gentle bile and quiet vitriol; you would have enjoyed the restaurant, which had plenty of wild game on the menu. She stalked off after I pointed out some home truths, which is to be expected of her. So there it is. I have some weeks of leave yet, and although I have completed the job you requested, I'm going to stay here for a while. It is a fascinating city that I haven't begun to explore._

_I don't expect to see her again, nor did she say anything about writing to you, but she's alive._

_Severus Snape_


	3. Ch 3

**Chapter Three**

I spent a disturbed night. Champagne sauce disagrees with me. I finally got up earlier than my wont, dressed in my darkest clothing, and managed tea and toast at a café across the street from my hotel. The papers, both Wizard and Muggle, noted nothing of interest happening in Britain. It was still startling to read one without finding an account of some horrific act, or a report of the death of someone you knew. I considered where to go. Kafka's house? The Jewish Cemetery? Further exploration of the Wizard quarter? No, all of that required thought, and after last night, thought was unattractive. I wasn't inclined to go sit in a damp church listening to Mozart, that trifling twit. After a bit more deliberation, I decided to make my way to the Castle.

Hordes of people, vast numbers of them, Muggles and Wizards and probably Dark Creatures were doing their tourists' duty, pouring across the Charles Bridge and up to the complex crouched on the hill like a huge, malevolent porcupine napping in a fort. Surrounding me were a myriad of languages; the crisp consonants of eastern Europe slicing through sinuous French and Spanish vowels, and I even heard a deep voice speaking Arabic. Ishaqi, again. Once, long ago, we shared a body for a brief period of time, and he still resonated within me under certain circumstances.

I hated him. I hated his grace, his talents, his confidence, his knowledge, freely gained, of the darkest, most arcane magic. No bitter tang of the forbidden and the suspected for this prince of men, no, he took such things as his birthright. She did, too. I dismissed him. Polite, as always, he left.

As the rabble poured into the buildings, I wandered off into the steppes of the gardens. It was quiet. It was green, and bright and altogether not in line with my mood, but I wandered there anyway. The tidy stone walls were attractive and soothed the feeling of incipient chaos that any time with Viviane always stirred up, and which was still lingering in me from the night before. Below, the red roofs of the city blended with the deeper reds and dark golds of leaves about to die. Taking the bag out of my pocket, I poured the fragments of the Talisman into my palm where they glittered in the morning sun. For a long moment, I considered casting them away and letting this wretched token of all my failures drift down upon the city in a personal act of defenestration, but I closed my fingers around the coarse golden dust, poured it back into its bag, and slipped it into my innermost pocket.

The castle, like all former haunts of the deposed and exiled, was bare, and the echoes of a million traveler's footsteps had stifled any of those who had once lived here. I sauntered through innumerable vaulted and paneled rooms, and caught myself wondering what scathing remarks Viviane would have made about Czech versus French domestic architecture. This prompted me to take the nearest exit and make for the cathedral, which was improbably named after a saint also credited with inventing some sort of dance.

And I had thought the exterior was outrageous. The interior - it was something that could have been decorated by Lucius. Amidst the by-the-numbers cathedral architecture hung angels that looked more menacing than exalted, and on the wickedly pointed gates of the chapels were stuck large blood-red stars, fashioned in stained glass and gilded lead, and lit from within. I walked along from alcove to alcove, morbid thoughts of my past rising to blend with the tang of incense and struck matches. As I counted the glowing stars, I told off the name of some person I had lost, or who I caused to die. Phineas Bones. Dennis Hopkirk. Giselle Marvolo. Goyle. Black. Minerva. Cordelia. At that last name, I gripped the bars to the gate of a chapel containing a cabinet carved with disapproving cherubim and filled with dripping wax candles. Placing my forehead against the chill iron, I realized that all the important failures in my life somehow came back to Viviane, and knew I wasn't finished with her. Not yet.

The gall of her. She told her concierge that she was unavailable to me, nor was I to be told of her movements. Ha. The number of korunas on the bill that I slipped him made him grin in appreciation and immediately give me all the information that I wanted to know. It was a pity that she was still overestimating the effect of her personal attractions.

She was in a café close to her hotel. It looked like it belonged in Belgium rather than here, with its high ceilings and dark walls, interspersed with huge mirrors. The difference was the hundreds of flyers plastering every vertical surface, offering everything from concerts to male performance enhancers. I slipped one off the wall to include in my next letter to Remus, in case he needed help in areas beyond dangerous transformations.

Naturally, she had appropriated the best corner table in the place. It was covered with newspapers, books and a large pot of coffee that smelled most inviting. She was dressed in black this afternoon, the stark color emphasizing the harshness of her face, but the long, narrow sleeves of her cashmere jumper came down below her wrists, throwing her elegant hands into prominence as they clutched a book.

I wondered if she would try to walk away again when faced with the results of all she had done, or left undone. She could try, but this time I would be prepared. What was it that I wanted from her, anyway? An apology? An acknowledgment of her complicity in all that had happened? To see her miserable? That last sounded attractive.

Making sure she did not see me, I slid onto the bench next to her. Trapped. She had been stupid enough take her lodgings and her pleasure in the Muggle section of the city, so I knew I was safe from her magic, and the heavy iron and marble table hemmed her in from all other avenues of escape.

"Louis L'Amour," she said, handing the book to me without a glance in my direction. "I assumed he must be a contemporary of Paul de Kock, but he writes the oddest stories about primitive America. There are lots of cattle and guns, and not enough sex." Yawning, she slumped into the angle of the wall. "How much did you pay him?"she murmured, picking up her cup of coffee. "I told him not to reveal anything for under 500 korunas."

What had caused me to forget just how much of a bitch she could be? But she was such a stylish one, that was the problem. You had to admire her methods. Then that moment in the cathedral came back, and I said, "Five hundred korunas is a bargain if I can make you understand what-"

I trailed off. I wasn't sure anymore, what it was I wanted her to understand, only that there was something unsaid and undone that needed saying and doing. I tried again. "Ten years ago, when you told me that you were leaving-"

That didn't work, either. It was horrible. I was floundering around like a fifth-year in front of the girl he wanted to ask to Hogsmeade, and Viviane just sat there, regarding me with a detached air over her coffee cup with her pale eyes that had no trace of humor or anger.

Taking a deep breath, I tried one more time. "Walking out on me last night was a sorry move, Viviane. Have you lost all of your fire? You've written me letter after letter these ten years, and now when I've come to talk to you, you won't discuss anything."

I nearly dropped the cup of coffee I'd decided to pour myself, to cover my confusion. She had begun to snort with laughter, and finally turned to me with her full attention.

"Oh Severus, how you manage to survive, I don't know. It must be Hogwarts. Only there can you ignore the rest of existence. You refuse to talk to me for ten years, then drop in and expect me to spill out all of my guilt over whatever it is you think I've done."

She set her cup down and took both of my hands, warmth beginning to glow in her eyes. "I've done terrible things, of course, awful things. It is why I stepped away, before they consumed me and I became a terrible act in myself. Severus, if it is so damned important to you that I say something, tell me what it is you want to hear. I hate to see you so wrapped up in this quest for - for - what? What do you want from me? What specific thing do you want me to atone for? I'll kneel down and beg pardon, if it will give you some peace. The floor here is particularly hard, and will procure genuine remorse from my joints, if not my soul."

What an extraordinary offer. I stared at her, wondering what she expected me to do with it. Viviane Chance couldn't have made it; her anger forbade any attempt at conciliation. Viviane Devereaux wouldn't have made it; her pride would not allow such a gesture. What, then, did Viviane Calloway mean by making it, here, in the middle of a crowded café?

I decided to take her at her word. I'd see just how much Chance, just how much Devereaux was left in her, and how much she recalled of our past.

"You used to flatter yourself that you knew me better than anyone. Get down on your knees, and tell me what you think I want to hear."

She blinked in surprise - still underestimating me, even after all these years - and slid off the bench and onto the hard marble, folding her hands over my right knee. After staring at the floor for a second, she lifted her head and gazed up into my face with a look that would have been earnest, had it not been for the mocking lift to the corners of her mouth.

"I beg your pardon for killing your old flame, no matter how richly she deserved it. I truly am sorry for using my arcane talents to rescue you from the Glossop's basement, thus denying you the opportunity for an heroic death and a posthumous Order of Merlin, Third Class. I'd apologize for foisting Ishaqi on you, but you did that on your own. Finally, I am more sorry than you know for ever thinking that Albus might have a good idea. I mean that last with all my heart, so I shall now grovel to prove it."

With that, she buried her face in my lap and began to wriggle about.

My thoughts on this outrageous behavior? Well, I wasn't thinking. Much. I grasped the edge of the bench and stared down at her hair, tried to concentrate on the intricacies involved in gathering bezoars.

Luckily, she decided on a short grovel, and soon, although not soon enough, she raised her head. To my surprise, her expression, initially amused, changed into wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock. I followed her gaze. The café had gone silent, and I caught a multitude of startled faces just turning away.

Exasperated at the uselessness of time against Viviane's propensity to get me into scrapes, I sighed, "At least we're in the Muggle quarter of the city."

The faces turned to us again as wild shrieks of laughter began to echo out from underneath the table. I was about to make my escape, but her hand reached up and she pulled me under and into a heap next to her on the cold floor. "Oh Severus," she gasped, "how I've missed you." The shrieks subsided into giggles. "Just imagine what those children out there must think of us."

Tilting my head, I peeked out at the crowd of surly young students and began to laugh myself. "If they had any idea of how very proper that was, in light of some of our previous encounters-"

I stopped. Those were memories best left entombed. We were Professors Snape and Chance, old colleagues and young enemies of a nebulous kind. Beside me, Viviane had tensed into thoughtfulness. "Living under constant pressure - during undeclared war - it does things..." Her voice trailed off, and she twisted her fingers together in a gesture I'd never seen before. "But Severus, those encounters kept us human in the face of such inhumanity, that I think I may owe you my life. It may have been a poor return, to leave you as I did, but sometimes, one must trade what one wants to do, or should do, for a chance at freedom." She shrugged and refused to look at me. "I suppose this is my real confession."

Resting my chin on my knees, I closed my eyes and tried to absorb the truth that was shaking dust from my soul. Since I had met her, back on the quay, there had been something missing from Viviane, but I had never been able to fathom what it was. Now, with her voice telling me things she had never had the grace to tell me before, I realized what was lacking. Anger. Resentment. Rejection. Now I knew that the enmity had been one-sided and we had never been enemies, but the distance the fantasy created had been far too convenient for me to deny. Only one enemy, and it had been me.

I do not know how long I sat there, but finally, I heard her voice again, quiet and subdued. "Come, Severus, let's stop providing perverse speculation for half of Prague." I opened my eyes, and followed her as she crawled from beneath the table. As I made an elaborate show of straightening my clothing, she dropped money on the table and stuffed her books and papers into a satchel. Sweeping one of her deadly glances across the room, she forestalled any potential snickers, and caused all heads to drop down towards whatever each was pretending to read.

"Where are we going?" I asked, still trying to find my footing on yet another new mental landscape full of rocks and bogs. "I'm not sure-"

"I don't know - oh, here, we'll go to this," she said, snatching a flyer from a young man dressed like a back alley coachman in need of a laundress.

Gathering the last of my wits, I made one demand. "No Mozart," I said.

"I should hope not," she snapped, thrusting the flyer into my jacket pocket and taking my arm. "He gives me the fidgets."

Even shameless Frenchwomen of overemphasized lineage have their advantages.

_Dear Lupin,_

_The only reason I'm writing to you is out of boredom. I'm sitting in a voluptuous church somewhere in Prague, listening with relief to the orderly march of the Goldberg variations. However, I find I need to do something with my hands, so it is either writing to you, or strangling Viviane, and why interrupt Bach with murder?_

_Wipe that smirk off of your face. Yes, I saw her again and I am with her now, but it wasn't by choice; she indulged in one of her grand manipulative gestures with me as victim. As I recall, she was already an expert at such things when you met her all those years ago, when she was partner to that confidence man. Ah, yes, the very distant past, before respectability and redemption set in and it was the two of you against the world. You even displayed your delicate stomach when she murdered a man in front of you, she once told me. What a pity such scruples don't survive the transformation._

_She lured me to a café, where she proceeded to dig her nose into my lap. The denizens of the café were appalled, of course, to see a woman of her age acting like, well, Viviane. Underneath the mortification, I did feel a sense of continuity that is rare for those of our generation. Great wizards may die and civilizations unravel, but you can always count on Viviane to go her shameless, aristocratic way no matter the time or circumstance._

_One curious matter demands clarification, and you are the only person I can possibly ask for it. After removing her head from my lap, she indulged in a rare fit of introspection and said, in reference to her desertion of me, "one must trade what one wants to do, or should do, for a chance at freedom." Really. What did she want to do, Lupin? What she did was marry Calloway. I know her perfectly capable of creating the great romantic myth of her marriage out of nothing, and while I never did believe the myth, I am surprised to find such blatant evidence of my being right, and from her own lips. As I said, it is most curious. Just how much wool did she pull over the eyes of the world concerning her relationship with Calloway? I would bet the yield of at least a thousand flocks._

_She's getting irritated. Her chin is tilting up, and her nostrils are beginning to flare, and those basilisk eyes of hers are narrowing. The musicians aren't quite that bad, and the eye nearest me is beginning to work its way into the corner, to try and see what I'm writing. Her hand goes up to push aside a stray tendril of hair that is in the way, and she tucks it back as she pretends she is checking the security of her hairpins. She can be rather enchanting when she thinks she's being subtle._

_I await your answer._

_Severus._


	4. Ch 4

**Chapter Four**

It was over, and the tourists rushed out to find their next bit of excitement. Viviane was sitting still, staring up at one of the chandeliers, showing no intention of moving, much less getting out of her chair. Perhaps she'd picked up some sort of moronic habit from Calloway. I shook her shoulder.

"Viviane, the concert is over. Is there anywhere-"

Was there? And did I want to accompany her? What did I want to do with the damned woman? Take her to dinner, take her to bed, take her to the river and throw her in? I found myself wondering if she could swim, and was surprised at myself that I didn't know. Looking over at her, now looking at me, I realized there was a lot I didn't know about her, even from the days when I thought I knew her better than I knew anyone. Did I want to find out more about her at this late date? I was still reeling from scene in the café, and I quickly let go of her shoulder.

"Anywhere?" She looked like she was trying not to laugh. If there was one thing I did not need at this moment, it was to be mocked by a grief-stricken No-Rules Quidditch groupie.

"It seemed as if you were going to sit here all night," I said, dredging up patience from all sorts of corners where I'd stored it up in anticipation of meeting her. "I wanted to make sure, because I certainly do not. It is damp in here, and the chairs are uncomfortable."

"We've seen the obligatory sights, gone to a concert; I suppose it's time to catch up with each other, now that you've finally come around and decided to act like an adult." She paused and broke into giggles. "Sort of adult."

"I'm not the one causing scenes in cafes," I pointed out, but marveled at the way she could still divine what I was thinking.

She began to stir in her chair, glancing around and behind her, in search of inspiration. "Have you been to the area adjacent to St. Nicholas' cathedral? It's got some lovely cafes, and is near where Kafka once lived. He's suitably miserable for you."

Such easy prods weren't worth an answer, so I got to my feet, pulling her up by the elbow. Walking out of the dim church, we were confronted by a glare of sunlight, which caused Viviane to growl in displeasure and begin to root around in her handbag. Producing a pair of sunglasses, she slid them on with a sigh of relief. They completely covered her eye sockets, followed the line of her cheekbones, and made her look like an anti-heroine in one of those Muggle action films. "Better," she sighed.

"I always suspected the Devereaux of having vampire blood," I said, as we started down the stairs.

She threw back her head and laughed. I nearly pulled her off her feet as I stopped without warning on the step above her, frozen by the sound I had long forgotten; her genuine, abandoned laughter that was one of the few things I had savored in the years we struggled against a resurgent Voldemort. It rang like victory bells, then, and now.

Looking up at me, her laughter subsided into a wicked grin. "I always thought so, too. It allowed me to excuse the excesses of my family through the centuries."

I stepped down to face her, and drew her sunglasses down to peep into her eyes.

"Do you really think, perhaps, that somewhere in the bloodline-"

She pushed them back up and began to walk away from the cathedral. "No. No, the Devereaux lusted for power, not blood, from the very beginning. The de Fontaines, the de Sades...perhaps. They had a great appetite for blood, but not in the way of vampires."

Underneath my hand, her arm trembled. Again, I was taken aback by reminders of the terrible ordeals she had fought through, and yet here she was, standing in the sunlight, as sane as she could be, one moment shaken by memories, and then her newfound beauty struck me again, as I watched the grin melt into an expression of remembered joy about which I knew nothing.

We fell silent and paced along the narrow sidewalks, jostling other people draped in cameras and consulting guidebooks. Finally, Viviane tugged me into a dark little café, redolent of centuries and strange liqueurs. She got into a conversation with the proprietor that was carried on, I recognized with shock, in French. When he left, she shrugged. "It is so hard to find decent local wine, and he has an excellent cellar of French, German and American varieties."

He returned with the bottle, respectably dusty, with glasses and a small bowl of olives. As he opened and poured, I tested my chair. It was heavy, wooden, with a straight back. Excellent. I had a feeling I was going to be here for a while - it was a combined twenty years of information, after all - and as I raised my glass to touch hers, I asked her, "Would you like to start, my dear, or shall I?"

Rubbish. It was rubbish, all of it, and I suppressed a sigh as she went on with her tale of the big happy family in the Irish stone mansion, and the fabulous time she and her Quidditch jockey had had running his security business and vacationing on the Continent and I mostly wondered where our second bottle of wine was. The proprietor had gone to fetch it some time ago. She looked up at me in a sorry welter of Irish sentimentality - it sat on her like a boil - and I decided it was time for some disillusion.

"You expect me to believe that Viviane Devereaux - who fell in love with an Eastern Prince, who treats Europe as her private fiefdom, who, at some time or other, has conquered nearly everyone but herself, found happiness in an Irish backwater, and was the doting Auntie to Seamus Finnigan? Please, Viviane, drag me to a café and share a glass of wine with me, but don't lie to me." The man, finally back with the wine, stopped pouring to give me a surprised glance. I was surprised too. I sounded more bitter not than I was, but than I meant to let on.

She watched the wine pour into her glass, her expression inscrutable. "You wouldn't believe I could find happiness outside of the boundaries of your imagination, would you? I wouldn't expect so." Her eyes rose from the wineglass, met mine. "But I did. It - it wasn't perfect, of course, what is? Speaking of imperfection, what of you? What have you refused to tell me, all these years?"

That was easy enough. I'd ranted all my miseries to her constantly over the years, in my dreams and in the bathtub and while watching the latest batch of hopeless Potions students. My history was simple and quickly told: deaths, collapse, rebuilding, teaching, planning, wearing myself to exhaustion and watching the rewards go to others, as usual. My penance was not to stop with Dumbledore's death, and I was made to know it. Comfort began to steal through me - such a foreign sensation, one not felt for so long - as Viviane frowned and snorted and shrugged in all the right places. "Sprout?" she shouted, turning all heads. "They gave Hogwarts to that grinning bubotuber?"

I could trust myself only to clear my throat, and gulp some wine. "Yes. The overall atmosphere is very, er, Hufflepuff."

Viviane shuddered. "Gods, I'm sorry."

"Quite."

We fell silent. She bent her eyes to the scarred wood of the table, and one badly tended fingernail traced the accumulated graffiti of a century. Once again, I found myself tracing the reality of the woman I'd rejected the very idea of for so many years. The uncompromising way her neck met her shoulder, the line of her profile from her forehead to the bridge of her nose, the proud tilt of her head, the mouth, sharply chiseled as ever, but its expression softened by the years and a developed sense of humor. Or so I told myself. I didn't want to think of other possibilities for the change.

Someone put on music, and a sinuous Latin melody drifted out from behind the bar.

"Do you want to tango, Severus?" It was said mockingly, but she clapped her hands to her mouth for a second, then dropped them back to the table. "I forgot, you dance very well. It is such an incongruous talent for someone like you to have."

"You don't need to be good at Quidditch to dance; you need a different sort of coordination and an exceptionally attractive teacher." It wasn't Viviane speaking, it was Tom, older, glamorous Tom, my savior and my mentor from yet another past. He shook me out of my Quidditch-impaired despair and provided the teacher; one of his many mistresses, this one a favorite because she had been Dumbledore's star pupil, seduced away from Hogwarts at the start of her seventh year. She proved an adept at teaching awkward young men to move smoothly with another body. Strange, how many pasts Viviane and I had between us, and how they bumped up against each other to form different patterns, depending on circumstance. I watched this one with interest, watched myself emerge from a difficult teen to a Dark dandy under Tom's watchful eye. He chose me, and there are times when I choose to believe he needed me.

"It was more painful than I thought possible, watching Tom die." I blinked. I kept saying things I was thinking. I never did that.

Viviane's head jerked up from her examination of the table. "I imagine it would be harder to watch him live, after what he'd become. You understood the loss of his potential more keenly than anyone, no doubt."

To my abiding shock, I had to pause and swallow hard before speaking, in order to steady my voice. From anyone else, that statement would have been an accusation. Viviane's voice held nothing but sympathy. "It was and yet, his death was the end of my most idealistic self. I really can't explain it, but it was terrible to see the man who once understood the grand, silly visions of youth, all that we thought might be possible - well, there he was, blown to nothing by James Potter's spawn, a boy not worth the dust of the man he destroyed."

She sighed. "I must admit, I'm glad I wasn't there." To my surprise, she began to shudder, and huddled into the corner formed by the wall and her bench. I stared at her, trying to figure out this newest puzzle, when she unclasped one hand from her bicep and waved it vaguely at me. "Sorry. Sorry, I'll be all right in a moment. More wine, I think. Too much death of late, Severus, and it all overwhelms me at times..."

Her babble continued. I tuned out her voice and looked at her eyes. They were dilated, only a thin ring of green around the pupil, and full of horror. Ah. After all the death she'd casually meted out, the only one that would horrify her would be the one in which she had had no control and no involvement. The misery in her face drew me to my feet, and I forgot my resentment, my rage and my carefully nurtured indignation in a wave of something near regret. I saw that no one around her had been able to break through her grief, and all I could remember at that moment was that she had been my friend and my ally and sometimes my savior, and I had basely renounced her when she needed me most.

Sliding onto the bench next to her, I gathered her into my arms, kissed her hair, her ear, slid her legs over my knees. She burrowed her head into my shoulder, and one hand came up to clasp mine.

To get a clearer idea of what, exactly, feminine grief entailed, I asked, "How did you find out that Calloway had finally gotten himself killed?"

After a deep breath and a reach for her wine, Viviane unfolded herself from my torso and sat up, stiff, instead of her usual, casually perfect posture. "I got an owl from Rob, his teammate and best friend, and soon after, they - they brought him home. They'd been playing a match in Portugal and I have no idea how they managed it, but the next day, the team showed up with Rufus in his coffin. For a day, I could not look at him, but I did lift the lid, finally. I had to. I'd asked him not to go, because I knew he'd get hurt somehow, but I never thought - never dreamed - he was so strong, and they arrived with him in that box, and it was so unreal."

"Ah," I said. "Yes, I know unreal."

"His hair was the same, even his face - there was only a little bruising - but his neck was broken and his head was lying at an angle that was horribly wrong. He looked so uncomfortable, and Rufus was never uncomfortable, not with me or my past or anything in our future. I couldn't bear to have him go into eternity like that, so I tried to straighten his neck, and I couldn't, and he was so damned cold, and he was never cold - I always was, and now I don't think I'll ever be warm again, and I'm so afraid-"

She set down her wine and covered her face with her hands.

Of course she would be afraid of the cold. She'd spent most of the time I knew her heading to the nearest fire, and dressing in gowns with distractingly low necklines, but with sleeves down to her wrists, and made of thin wool even in summer.

Once again, I heard myself speaking aloud what I felt. "That damned bloody fool. No man worth his salt would leave you to play a boy's game, after everything we've all gone through. His stubbornness and selfishness got him tossed out of Hogwarts in his sixth year, and it's obvious he hadn't changed a bit."

Viviane took her hands away from her face, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and, wide-eyed, started a messy sort of sniffle-giggle that, to my alarm, held a tinge of hysteria.

"Oh Severus. Thank you." Having used my trouser leg as a handkerchief, she next tried wiping off her wet face with both hands, producing disastrous results. "Severus, I've waited a year for someone to say that, but dreading that they would, because I'm not supposed to be so angry at him and I am. He could be a stubborn bastard, but he was such a sexy one that I didn't really mind. I don't resent you saying it though, because damn, I'm exhausted from the soppy sympathy and all the talk of our great love and how romantic it all was. It is not romantic to have your husband flown home dead from a damned Quidditch match gone wrong.

"I suppose not," I murmured, having a most unfortunate urge to laugh. All my life, I could read people so easily, from Albus to Potter, but they never failed to trump me by breaking every rule while holding me firmly to them. Viviane never failed to surprise me, and when the result wasn't nearly mortal, it could be delightful. I picked a few stray, wet pieces of hair off of her face and smoothed them back, remembering also that she never gave rules a second thought, but never expected me to cleave to any, either.

Handing her her wine, I picked mine up and clinked glasses. "To Rufus," I said. "That stubborn bastard."

"To you," she replied. "You enthusiastic misanthrope."

_Dear Remus,_

_How you let Viviane get into and remain in this state, I cannot imagine. For someone who claims to know her so well, your analysis of her state of mind was embarrassingly off target. She was nowhere near throwing herself into the river, although I admit it was a tempting option to consider helping her to it. She was, however, sadly in need of a shoulder and a few well-considered words of comfort, which I offered – for future reference, try giving her the truth instead of romantic twaddle. She responds to it. Her gratitude, and her way of showing it, was as genuine as it was inappropriate, but I remained a gentleman and merely saw her to her door._

_Regarding your thoughts of what to do when hit with Astrangularis, I must disagree. Using a series of subtle itching spells combined with Rictusemprus will do nothing; in a duel, you need a good sharp, overwhelming hex - something that will demoralize your opponent, not make him reach for itching powder. Your strongest Collapsus spell aimed straight at the lungs would be the best strategy, and more practical if you're choking than performing a series of third year curses. The goal is to win the damned duel, not show off your creativity and charm._

_I've been doing some research into certain potions, being in that part of the world where your favorite brew is quite popular. I may be able to add some sugar to it, or at least a few drops of honey; there has been quite a bit of research here on how to improve the taste._

_Severus_

I set down my quill, sealed the letter, and tried to remember exactly what had happened.

Daylight, two bottles of wine, three hours of conversation, a confession, tears, candlelight and then we were walking back to her hotel, down an avenue lined by tall rococo buildings and busy cafes. Viviane was on the thin edge between exhaustion and frantic energy that often follows a release of emotion, and it made me wary. Her fingers grasped my arm for balance, but she strode along, humming one of the bawdy French songs she liked to sing when in a good mood.

"Are you going to stay at Hogwarts forever?" she asked, abruptly stopping her tune. "It's a dull sort of life to settle for."

I was irritated enough to aim for her weak spot. "At least it is an academic center, and not situated in an educational backwater, where half the population goes in for trade."

She flinched and fell silent, and did not resume humming. My irritation increased. "What do you plan to do, Viviane? Flit around Europe forever? Retire to become the beloved chatelaine of the Calloway family, your finger in every domestic pie? Go back to Paris and challenge the Mortemart for control of the Ministry?"

To my relief, she laughed at the last suggestion. "Oh yes, a power struggle between Raymond and myself would be so good for France. No, I've got my bets on Isabeau. She is laying low now, but she'll come out on top in a few years, and France will be in good hands."

I sorted through my memories. Isabeau. Ah yes, the quiet woman who shadowed sinister Raymond like a dark dragonfly. "How, exactly, is she going to do that? She has no power outside the family, and Raymond is not about to give any up, not even to her."

By this time, we were at the door of her hotel, and she turned to face me in the dim gaslight spilling from the archway that lead to the inner courtyard. Her eyebrows were arched in amusement, her generous mouth tilted in gleeful triumph. "Oh, she's got some power. As she left Hogwarts when their attempted deception of me failed, I gave her the deeds to both Aquitaine and the Chateau de Mepris. She'll have plenty of money from the lands of the chateau, and the ruins of Aquitaine, and will control the residual power that survives there. I only wish I could see Raymond's face when he finds out."

Shock overcame manners, and I shook her hand from my arm to grasp both of hers. "You gave her the deeds to your land? To Aquitaine? Viviane - why?"

She shrugged. "Why not? They are places of death to me, dragging me back always to the events that sent me down such terrible paths. To her, they can be the means of renewing the arts that were lost through Voldemort's destructive march through France. Isabeau has the passion for the land that I once had, and will see that my gift is kept safe from Raymond's machinations."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I was still trying to comprehend her act, but an inexonerable if-then game was forming in my mind, making sense of the past in a way that had escaped me for more than a decade. If she had been strong enough to break the fetters of ruined Aquitaine, then surely the act of tossing aside her sword, and the power that went with it, was within her sphere of possibilities. If she had found the will to throw back the poisoned heritage of her damnable family, then her choice of Rufus Calloway did not seem so far fetched. If she had made peace with her burdens, then the balance I saw behind her grief was not an illusion.

"You weren't speaking to me, remember?" she said, her voice light and free of accusation. "It is a habit of yours." She swayed towards me, and I realized that we'd only had some olives and bread with our wine. "But I've missed you very much these ten years, happy as I have been."

Before I could say anything, or even step back, Viviane's body was pressed against mine. Despite the fact that in the last twelve hours she'd had her head in my lap, and been in my arms, and I had kissed her hair, and she had clasped my hand, for the first time a jolt of the old sensual electricity shot up my spine, then gathered back into a glowing, roiling mess in my very core. Before I could do anything with this information, her hands, her talented, dangerous, bloodstained hands – so like mine - had grasped the strands of my hair and bent my head that fraction down to hers.

She kissed me. The world tilted. Rather, the tilted axis of the globe abruptly stood at attention and all I could do was feel past and present collide and burst into fragments as her soft, warm lips slid along mine, seeking a response. I was thrilled by her advance, horrified by it, unsure of her motives, happy for the chance to give Rufus a posthumous cuckolding, and not at all pleased that he lingered between us in the tears I'd dried such a very short time ago.

I responded. I could not help it, not with her body finding all the old contact points against mine, with her lips parting, her fingertips caressing the back of my neck. My clenched hands opened and automatically began seeking out the old scars that were hidden underneath the wool and, when exposed, used to thrill me so. I'd followed them in memory for so long, recalling the texture and taste of each one, and the thought of exploring them again in reality made me crush her more closely against me.

Taking her mouth from mine, she gave me a stare, her eyes gone dark and secretive. Her fingers trailed down my arms, raising flesh through layers of clothing until she captured my hands, and took a few steps backward, leading me towards the archway of the hotel.

It would have been so easy to follow. Every instinct I had was reaching for her, except one, and that one was the flair for survival that had kept me alive through mind-wrenching turns of fate. It stopped my feet, and I shook myself from her grasp. "No, Viviane, not tonight," I said, with great effort keeping regret from my voice. "I won't be your consolation prize in lieu of a dead man." That was true enough. After our conversation tonight, the idea of Rufus was still hovering in the air between us, and it wasn't my idea of a romantic atmosphere.

"You rotten bastard." Viviane's voice was so low that anyone who didn't know her would have missed the rage in it. "I won't even bother to hex you. Goodnight."

She stalked into the building, leaving me feeling as close to an idiot as I'd ever felt. I glanced around at the quiet little street, saw nobody but myself standing on the ancient cobblestones, and started to walk back to my own hotel. I turned my head slightly in order to catch the last, lingering scent of her on the lapel of my jacket. It went to my head as if I were standing in a field of poppies, and I tried to drive the image of her, alone, infuriated and aroused in a former convent cell, from my mind, but with little success. I knew it would be another sleepless night, hopefully for both of us.


	5. Ch 5

**Chapter Five**

I slept, finally, just as light had begun to slide through the infinitesimal space between shade and casement. It was a restless snooze, fretful and frustrating and layered with a sense of dread. After an hour, I admitted defeat, rolled over, got out of bed and stumbled into the shower.

My overheated skin welcomed the blast of cool water so that I could almost feel my pores opening to drink it in. Truth, uninvited and unwelcome, rained down on my head along with the water, and I sighed as I acknowledged to myself that I had slept deeply before that feverish morning half-sleep. I know I had, because I remembered every detail of the dream.

I had dreamt of my Dark Mark, burning crisp against my pale skin, and I had dreamt of her scars, every one of them. I knew through instinct that Rufus had overlooked the raised lines of flesh, accepted them as naturally as he did the permanent reminders he bore of close-fought Quidditch matches. But he did not adore her scars as I did. He hadn't talked over the history of each one as it was caressed and committed to memory, as I had done. She had not kissed his bruises before lovemaking, as she had always kissed my Dark Mark, as part of our personal ritual. The history of our marked bodies was bound up in the history of our struggles and triumphs over each other and ourselves. They were the touchstone of our separate but similar pasts, the record of how we had become who we were, and had served as tactile illustrations to the stories we had whispered to each other in the tense, sibilant nights, while all around us Death Eaters gathered power.

Closing my eyes, I placed both palms and my forehead against the cool tile, and, concentrating on the water pattering against my back, tried to stop acting like an adolescent boy with a BeWitchHim lingerie catalog. It didn't work. As a matter of fact, that idea brought up memories of Viviane's fine linen undergarments, warm from her skin and so fine you could see the flesh glowing beneath. It was no use. With an irritated sigh over the vagaries of owning a male body, I did what needed to be done, finished my morning ablutions, and padded back into the bedroom to choose my attire for that day.

Dark trousers, ivory linen shirt, dark woolen blazer. I dressed without thinking about it, my thoughts still in the grip of the dream, even if my body no longer was. Dropping into a chair, I placed my elbows on the desk and hid my face in my hands. I knew I needed to shake myself out of the mental cataract I was in; I could not afford to let myself get drawn back into her maelstrom. I had my life. I had Hogwarts, and a decent laboratory, and grudging fear and respect from both the school faculty and certain areas of the Ministry. It was a life I could only have dreamed of, twenty years ago, and I intended to keep it.

_Lupin,_

_Sometimes, being a gentleman is not its own reward, no matter what Filius always said. Considering the dubious traffic constantly scurrying between the back entrance of Hogwarts and his bedroom, one could certainly accuse him of hypocrisy in such matters._

_So, if I rejected her and left her and told her all she did not want to hear, why did I spend last night dreaming of things that you absolutely wouldn't want to know the details of? Or perhaps you would, but I'm not going to elaborate. Most people wouldn't want to hear about the details of their best friend's sexual practices, but considering you were in a relationship with Sirius Black for so many years, one can never assume normalcy._

_Damn. Damn her, damn you, damn this wretched city._

_Severus._

The lure of toast and tea drew me out of my room. As I descended the oversized staircase, a massive stone creation with broad, short steps, I spotted a wastebasket lurking in a corner of the landing. I crumpled one of the two letters I'd written to Lupin and tossed it in, and tucked the other into my pocket, to give to the concierge to post. I was finished, here. I was finished with her. She would sulk for at least three more days, and by that time I meant to be gone. I was ready to leave Prague and get back to Hogwarts. I smiled as I thought of the dismay that would ripple through my Potions classes when I and not Llewellyn, that specious, permissive fool, walked in, weeks before I was supposed to return. There were plenty of Gryffindor House points to be retroactively subtracted, of that I was sure, and a great deal of material to be added to the homework, in order to make up lost ground.

I turned into the lobby, stone, again, vaulted and crowded with overcarved and overstuffed chairs, armoires, cabinets and useless bits of china that covered every available surface. The witch at the desk, who was also the owner, had execrable taste and a deplorable tendency to collect things. I handed her my letter and turned to walk down into the breakfast parlor, located in the vaults of the building. As I turned, movement caught my eye, and with a shock I saw Viviane just rising from one of the chairs.

With my usual luck, the overcrowded surroundings only emphasized her elegance, making her stark, spare features a welcome relief amidst the chaos of middle-class trinkets. She was pale, her blue-gray jumper bringing out the blue in her skin, and she looked confused and very nearly shy. I stared at her, fascinated. Whether she was Devereaux, Chance or Calloway, Viviane was never, nor would I ever expect her to be, shy. Oh, she tried to act the ingénue the first night I kissed her, in a garden long since destroyed, but it had been a singularly ineffective performance. This, however, was real, and I stood still without saying anything, waiting to see what she would do next.

She stood as still as the china shepardess frozen in a cavort near her left elbow. "Severus, I came to apologize, for-"Glancing at the woman at the desk, she looked again at me and said, "would you join me for a walk?"

The dark smudges under her eyes showed the sort of weariness that I felt. "Perhaps, Viviane, we should walk in different directions from now on. I-"

Taking two long strides towards me, she said in an urgent, quiet tone, "I'm sorry I threw myself at your head last night. You weren't right in what you said, but in how you felt - well, I can understand. I'm not of much use to anyone right now, even to myself. But on the quay, when I looked up and saw you, something in me healed, even if I didn't let that show." The corners of her mouth lifted, but she looked away from me. The hotel owner who had been eavesdropping through a surreptitious Expanding Ear charm, leaned forward in breathless interest, waiting for my answer.

I grasped Viviane's forearm, the wool covering her skin so warm and supple that I had to stop myself from caressing it. "Viviane, you said what you came here to say. I think it best that I return to Hogwarts, and you continue to do whatever it is you're doing. Ten years, dead husbands, dead friends, and untold amounts of water eddying around piles of unstable bridges...we should leave it there."

"One last walk, please, Severus." She looked at me with narrow eyes, unaccustomed to pleading. "So much rampaging eau de coeur deserves at least a farewell promenade."

In spite of myself and her and this most uncomfortable situation, I laughed. As usual, she was wrong, but managed quite successfully to make wrong sound attractive.

"Where would you like to go?" I asked, wondering about ulterior motives and labyrinthian plans to somehow get me back to her hotel room. Naturally, she didn't answer, but took possession of my arm and lead me out into the street. Naturally, she walked straight to the pub that was the gateway between our world and the Muggle side of Prague. Unlike most cities, this gateway also had a Muggle entrance, and nary a glance was vouchsafed from the old men at the bar as witches and wizards appeared through a solid wall to take a seat. The Muggles here were immune to sudden, inexplicable changes of all kinds.

"Viviane, I want breakfast, but greasy pub eggs are not to my taste."

"Don't worry, I'll take you someplace more suited to your delicate palate," she said, pushing through the crowds of students and clerks, all waiting for food and absorbed in newspapers of at least a half-dozen languages.

Off we went through the crooked streets. It was cloudy, making the pastel colors on the houses deep and secretive, even with their shutters flung open for the day. We walked for some time until we were well away from the central square, and she pulled me into a glass-fronted building with the oversized doors so ubiquitous in Prague.

Inside, it was heaven. Warm light glowed off of wooden floors and walls painted soft shades of gold and green, or was absorbed by the wood of bookcases and the leather of overstuffed chairs. The air smelled of pastries and books and coffee and, underneath that, perfect, fresh tea. I nearly fainted with desire.

By the time I'd recovered, Viviane had us ensconced at a table, with coffee, tea, a pile of newspapers and an assortment of croissants and scones. Without a word, she poured herself some coffee and settled in behind the _Daily Telegraph._

"You read that piece of trash?" I asked, in between delirious sips of the best tea I'd had since leaving Hogwarts.

"I love it," she said, rattling the paper. "The strange things Muggles do to each other makes me feel somewhat better about the wizarding world. Besides, their Ministries are just as clueless as ours."

"Mmmmm," I replied, succumbing to the spell of the place. We sat there for hours - how many I do not know - slowly drinking and nibbling our pastries and exchanging comments on items found in our reading. Much of the time we were silent. Strange, how I had forgotten one of the things I liked best about her. Of all the women I have ever known, she has the capacity for silence if there is nothing she wants to say.

Just as I was getting restless, Viviane put down her paper. "Shall we end this where we began it?"she asked.

"The quay?" I glanced out of the window. It was still gray and cloudy, but it didn't look like it was going to rain anytime soon. "That seems fitting." I stood up as she sorted through her Muggle money to pay the bill, and so we left.

We walked, not touching, back through the streets towards the Vltava. As always, the castle bristled on the hill across the river; the dark stone of the cathedral looked even more sinister against the white walls of the palace on this day. I had no idea what I was going to say to her in parting, nor could I think of anything appropriate. Viviane was the distillated presence of everything inappropriate in my life.

Separately, we made our way down the treacherous staircase to the quay, and sat down, exactly three inches apart, on a bench opposite the castle. "Are you going to cut off all contact, or will you start answering my letters?" Viviane murmured, looking straight ahead. "If not, are there any last questions or comments you'd like to make?"

I leaned back and folded my hands loosely on my thighs. Did I want to correspond with her? Against all of my expectations and wishes, I'd found that talking to her was both stimulating and enjoyable, unlike the years of painful recrimination I'd been throwing at her in the privacy of my room at Hogwarts. But it concerned Viviane, and thus was subject to change. She interrupted my musings by entwining her fingers in mine. "Severus, I must tell you something," she whispered. "It is rather important." I opened my eyes, peering at her suspiciously.

"We won," she said. "Voldemort was defeated, and we won. I just thought you'd like to know."

I didn't rise to her stupid joke. There were reasons I was not galloping around like a fool, overjoyed at the outcome. "The wizard population won. Hogwarts won. Some of us resigned ourselves to a lifetime of mediocrity, and the promulgation of mediocrity all around us. I wonder, sometimes, if every exceptional talent that comes along turns out so badly. Even Dumbledore made tragic mistakes, and he wasn't the wizard Riddle was, or even Grindewald, the man he defeated in his prime. Slytherin House is now so weighed down with guilt and fear of greatness that even those that have the talent will not rise to meet it."

Viviane shrugged. "Sometimes, you have to adapt yourself to a changed world. I ended up the wife of an Irish bounder, and enjoyed it beyond words. A fate I never envisioned, but I accepted it." She flashed a hot, naughty grin. "Acceptance is easier when the sex is so good. You were put in the worst spot during the war; tolerated by one side, used by the other, and distrusted by both. You deserved better. You deserve better. Why not leave Hogwarts and seek out your greatness now, while you still have years ahead of you? It's a big world, Severus, and you've seen so little of it."

Staring down at our hands, I turned hers over and stroked the veins along her inner wrist. "How is it that you found two men to love you so? It isn't fair, and I don't see - "My voice trailed off. I wasn't sure what I wanted to say.

"I lost both of them in the end, and here I am, sitting with you on a foreign quay."

"Ah. Yes, you are."

I paused in my strokes, and left my fingers lightly on her wrist. Her pulse, strong and steady, beat through her skin. When she spoke, for the first time since that meeting on the quay, her voice was unsteady.

"Did you visit Lucius in your travels across Europe?"

I sat up, shocked at the name I hadn't heard for so long. "Malfoy? No, why should I? Are you mad, to think I'd search out a man responsible for so much destruction?"

My eyes widened as I realized what she had implied. "You have? You've gone to visit Malfoy? You paid a social call to the man who-"

Her hand tightened upon mine. "Malfoy lost everything he cared for. His son dead, his wife dead by her own hand, himself defeated at every turn. Lucius was an enemy, but a worthy enemy, and I hate to see him wasted in his grief, as he now is. He is the end of an old, once proud family. It would have been fitter for him to have died at the point of an Ollivander wand, defiant to the last, it would have been kinder to have lost his mind in exile. That he is alive and sane is his greatest tragedy."

My mouth twisted in the old, malignant feeling Malfoy could always arouse in me. "And he soothed you in your grief, is that it?

"Severus, you can be so thickheaded. No, I wanted to talk to someone who remembered how it all was before. That brief space of time we all had, to go about teaching and reading and holding our silly feasts and fighting our silly quarrels. It was important for me, and I could tell he was compelled to participate in the memories, even though they lacerated his soul. I got a bit of revenge mixed in with my reminiscences."

She went back to staring at the castle.

"What sort of memories were you so eager to relive?" I asked, wondering why she needed to do so; after all, she had always been dismissive about her time at Hogwarts.

"All sorts of things." Her soft green eyes grew even softer. "The onion soup Albus insisted on serving at feasts - remember how messy the cheese was? The lovely way the gardens were lit-"

"You never seemed to appreciate them. You were always running off into the shrubbery for one reason or another."

"Mostly involving you, you ungrateful man. Remus continually beating me at chess, my first few months there, when you were trying to get me fired. The Drooling Curse craze that went around and drove Minerva to distraction for the first and only time. I think she had a horror of drool. The shape of the terrace, and the way the lamps of the Hinkypunks would start to dot the lawn after sunset. Malhereuse on his perch near the big window, and the pile of cushions near the fire in my office."

I found that her head had come to rest against my temple, and her shoulder had wriggled beneath mine. I turned my head a little, so that my cheekbone brushed her hair, and despite myself, responded to her.

"I miss that room of yours. It was destroyed, you know, with most of Ravenclaw Tower. Remember when I came across you on the steps of the terrace, drenched in dragon's blood?"

"Mmmm. I was so relieved it was you and not someone else. You didn't seem the type to be taken aback by a blood-covered, distraught witch. I was feeling so isolated, so strange at Hogwarts those first months. Hated teaching, hated the routine, hated being bound to one place, and yet-"

We fell silent again. I shut my eyes, and felt the oddest sensation steal over my body. It was some time before I was able to analyze it and pin down the specifics, because I had not felt so in many years. A combination of peace, familiarity, comradery, freedom crept up my spine and settled somewhere in my eyelids, causing them to shut halfway as my back relaxed against the bench. I never visited the places in my heart that Viviane was calling up; the people and the times they lived through were gone forever and there was no use in repining, so I'd shut their memories away. Thinking of their loss enraged me, and I was too tired for rage. Odd, how their recollection in her voice was a salve, not a violent ripping away of half-healed scars.

My head fell sideways to rest against hers, and we sat with clasped hands, either silent and listening to boat horns and honking geese, or laughing over some particularly absurd memory to which one or the other of us gave voice. Through it all, I wondered if I could sustain this heady rapport with her beyond the seductive atmosphere of Prague, or if, once back in our familiar worlds, we would descend back into the madness our relationship had become so long ago.

Finally, she squeezed my hand, and her lips brushed my temple. "Severus, I think it's time for me to get back to my hotel. It is nearly dinnertime, and I'm starving. Will you walk back with me?"

We walked back towards her hotel, along narrow, crooked streets. Lost in our memories, we had forgotten the clouds. Suddenly, a few drops of water fell, then the storm broke and cold autumn rain poured down upon the city. As one, we fled towards the shelter of a church door, set in a narrow niche topped by a gothic pointed arch. Leaning against the red door, the damp smell of moldy black stone enfolded our senses as we stared out at the water smacking against pavement. I risked a glance at her. Her hair was damp, her skin gloriously flushed by the water and the run to shelter. She looked over and caught my eye, and her eyebrows twitched.

I do not know who moved first, but we slid into an embrace. I knew, in the detached part of myself, the risk of spiraling back into the past and into disaster but I couldn't feel it. There was an absence of the driving need to react and destroy that had characterized our relationship, and I was simply holding Viviane, warm and attractive and calm, in a doorway as a veil of rain cut us off from the rest of the world.

I awoke to light flickering through the red curtain of vines overhanging the window. Across the wooden floor, yellow and crimson leaves were scattered amidst small pools of water, blown through the open casement during the storm. Above me, more leaves were caught in the glittering cascades of crystal dangling from the chandelier. I remained motionless except for a tensing of muscle and the motion of my eyes. They slid sideways. Was she? She was, still asleep and tangled in hair and linen. I closed my eyes again and relaxed into the strange mattress that Viviane called a futon. It was too stark for my liking, but admittedly very comfortable, especially with the oversized pillows and soft sheets.

It was almost like waking to a stranger. The night before, we had done what we had done a hundred times before, only this time it hadn't been an act of defiance against death or loss or each other. For the first time, I felt the victory that Viviane had promised me on the quay. We had won. For the first time, I felt as if survival was cheaply grasped, and that living was the only reward worth fighting for. The idea made me restless, and I turned to her, sliding my arm around her waist. With a sigh of contentment, she curled up against me, burrowing into my body with a murmured, "Warm."

So long, it had been so long since I had been voluntarily touched. Not that I'd encouraged it. I began to smooth her long, untidy hair, the hair I had wound around my wrists the night before, in order to draw her closer to me. That led to more memories of the night, only interrupted by her voice.

"Fun, wasn't it?" Her impudent eyes were peering at me as she rested her chin on my chest. "Fine job you did at renunciation, after the show you put on in the café. I'm glad to see you've lost some of your talent for self-inflicted misery."

It was so familiar, yet so devoid of the poison that had filtered through our past that I began to laugh, and found I couldn't stop. The sleep deprivation was taking its toll. The shocked look on Viviane's face made it worse. Finally, I managed to gasp out a request for coffee.

"Excellent idea, Severus," she said, a hint of annoyance shading her voice. After her call to room service, she turned back to me. "Really, it isn't that funny."

"Oh, but it is," I said, finally calm. "That I was so naive as to fall into your trap amazes me, but the elaborate steps you took to ensnare me is flattering; murdering your husband, covering it up as a Quidditch accident, enlisting Lupin as intermediary, embarking on a long European trip, seducing me in the doorway of a church-"

I was saved from destruction by the arrival of the coffee. Viviane did have her priorities.

"You kissed me first, darling," she said between sips. "Your desperate attempts to chase me down as soon as you found my husband had died is romantic, if characteristically inappropriate."

Setting aside my cup, I waited until she set hers down and pulled her towards me, pinning her underneath my body in order to give her no means of escape. "But seriously, Viviane, once you finish what you planned to do in Europe, we can prepare for your return to Hogwarts. Ravenclaw Tower is destroyed, but I'm sure we could find rooms-"

I was nearly deafened by her shriek. It sounded horrified.

"You...you cannot possibly imagine that I'd ever - are you mad, to think - yes, you must be unhinged. Hogwarts? I'm not setting foot anywhere near the place, much less live there. Oh Severus, what were you thinking?" She began to giggle. "What would I do there? Become the new Divinations teacher? Open a pub? Become a Quidditch teacher and kill off half the students?"

She rolled me onto my back with a well-placed push, then bent over to brush my nose with hers, suddenly very serious. "I've got a small piece of land in the south of France, with a villa that overlooks the Mediterranean. It's got a small vineyard attached, that makes very good wine, with a few charms to counter the salt in the atmosphere. When Hogwarts is not in session, you can find me there. I know you'll never leave that damnable place; you'll end up like Binns and terrorize students till the end of time, but while you're still corporeal, I want you to come to me. Will you? Perhaps, too, during the Christmas holidays?"

I reached up to push the hair from her face. Had it all come to this, so simple, so easy, a mere word? It had. I said the word, and kissed her.

_Dear Lupin,_

_I've applied for three more weeks of leave. Why come back, only to have to fail an entire class because Llewellyn is such a wretched case? Do stop by and make sure the Potions classroom is still standing and if you have time, bite Annabella Weasley. It will save the entire faculty at Hogwarts years of trouble. If you get caught, I'm sure the Ministry will let you off, now that you are part of the inner circle. Let Sprout know that I'm going to test last year's classes at the start of next term and if they fail, they will be doing extra work for the next year to catch up._

_We're at the Devereaux summer villa near Eze. Rather a spectacular place, but I suppose the old French families felt the need for display, even in their vacation homes. Viviane is busy herding servants around; she's being very fussy about my rooms. Oh, and she has decided to become a vitner, and spends the most of her time reading up on the subject. The vineyard connected to the villa has been neglected since her parents were killed but she wants to bring it back. She should be a natural wine grower, since she drinks enough of the product._

_She even tried to help me by fixing up an old pavilion I'd planned to use as a Potions laboratory. Unfortunately, she blew it up instead. I heard the explosion, and when I ran out to see what had happened, she managed to divert one of my very best tantrums by admitting for the first time that she loved me. It was not the most romantic of situations, considering the soot and the pieces of wood tangled in her hair, but I found her rather charming, nonetheless._

_At the moment, the sun is setting over the sea, and Viviane is at her desk on the other side of the fireplace. She keeps glancing up to catch my eye, and by her smile I'm quite sure she's also writing to you an entirely fictional and romanticized account of our meetings. Knowing her as you do, I'm sure you'll take what she says with a gallon of wolfsbane. It is strange, after so many years, to have her within arms' reach. She has been my colleague, my lover, my savior, my nemesis, my princess, my warrior, my partner and my friend. Now, she is simply mine, on her own time and terms. One could say I was a lucky man._

_Severus Snape_

The End.


End file.
